Religious Freedom, Limited Government, and Political Liberty (Catholics Getting Burned)

Do atheists and agnostics have a stake in religious liberty? At first glance, it is hard to see why. But I think otherwise, and I addressed this question (among others) in a public lecture entitled “Obamacare’s Assault on Religious Liberty,” now available on YouTube, that I delivered a month ago today at the Allan P. Kirby Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship established not long ago by Hillsdale College in Washington, DC:

I say this because that Church has contributed mightily to placing in the hands of Barack Obama the power he is now wielding against the Catholic Church in the United States. For decades now the American Church has been allied with the Left in domestic affairs – pressing with vigor for ever-more extensive and ever-more expensive social programs. For decades the American Church has been pushing for one form or another of universal healthcare, demanding as its first priority that the federal government enact a health care policy that “ensures access to quality, affordable, life giving health care for all.” In the process, the American bishops asserted on 27 January 2010 that “health care is a basic human right” and claimed that “there are nearly 50 million Americans who do not have access to health care.”

I wouldn’t lump agnostics along with atheists in this.

Agnosticism is defined in the dictionary as “One who believes that it is impossible to know whether there is a God,” or, “One who is skeptical about the existence of God but does not profess true atheism.”

However, a third definition is in many cases more to the point. That God exists, but religions have so thoroughly bollixed up our tiny understanding of God, and inserted in so much human nonsense that distorts and corrupts this understanding, that religion is less than useless in appreciating, believing, worshiping or obeying God.

So much so that, in effect, we are all Gentiles, insofar as we are so disconnected from the truth that we are effectively under our own management, excepting those difficult to determine times, more or less, when we are under divine management.

Thus, an agnostic may believe in God, and may believe in prayer to God, and may believe to a lesser extent in the rules of life created by God but laid out by man, up to a point. Thus an agnostic may accept the ideas of “good and evil”, grace and sin, repentance and forgiveness, as well as justice and judgment.

Importantly, and this goes to the point of the main article, agnostics are likely to respect the rights of others to obey their religions, though they do not personally care for them, as long as these others do not seek to force their beliefs on others. Persuasion is acceptable, coercion is not.

America has a very old tradition of agnosticism as I described, and for very good reasons.

In Europe, for the majority of the time, kings and princes claimed a heavenly and religious fiat for their kingdoms, their activities and even their legitimacy. But this was turned around so that to oppose the nobility was to oppose God. And religion played along with this nonsense as often as not.

So our founding fathers were very clear that, while they respected God, they did not claim America was created by Him, and certainly, that American law was not written by Him. While it might conform to religious teachings, it was written by men, so it could be changed by men, without offending heaven.

This is the American tradition of Agnosticism. Respecting God and religion, but not pretending that they rule our day to day affairs. A ‘priest’ cannot overrule a congressman.

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